8 hours ago
The Liberal Illusion
Chapter XXXI
If there is one thing evident, it is that the non-Christian liberals, who are one-hundred-percent revolutionary, have no more use for the liberal Catholics than they have for the other Catholics. They expressly say so, they chant it at all times and in all keys; on this subject the Siecle has made repeated declarations, which leave nothing to the imagination and which certainly do not suffer from any lack of echoes.
More Christianity? Would that there were no more question of it at all! That is the Revolution’s cry wherever it is in power. And where in Europe is it not in power? Not a single revolutionary has protested against the ferocious howls of Garibaldi, against the more coldly murderous demands of M. Quinet, urging that Catholicism be “smothered in the mud,” against the moronic impiety of those blind partisans who form associations pledged to refuse the sacraments. To date, on the other hand, no revolutionary nabob has been converted by the platforms, the advances, the tendernesses, and, alas! it has to be confessed, the cringings of the liberal Catholics.
In vain have they disowned their brothers, despised the Bulls, explained away or repudiated the encyclicals: the lengths to which they have gone have won for them patronizing compliments, humiliating encouragements, but no alliances. Up to the present the liberal chapel lacks a gate of entrance, and seems to be nothing more than a gate of exit from the great Church. The eruption of hate still continues in the non-Christian liberal camp: it ignites in the midst of the world a conflagration of fury not only against the Church, but against the very idea of God. The heads of parties that govern contemporary Europe all vie with one another in an effort to break off all union between man and God. Among the schismatics, among the heretics, and lastly among the infidels, however slight the contact they have with civilization, everywhere the Church is being despoiled. The Moslem State seizes upon the goods of the mosques, as the Christian State in its turn confiscates ecclesiastical property; the one thing necessary is that God should not, under any name, under any title, possess a square foot of what He has created.
That is the world in which the liberal Catholics expect to find defenders, upright and staunch guardians of Catholic liberty!
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre